A Latin American critique of instrumental reason

Taking part in the broad contemporary effort of proposing an anticolonial and non-Eurocentric critical theory, this article sets out the dialogue between Aníbal Quijano's critique of coloniality, and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's critique of instrumental reason. Firstly, we reconstruct the critique of instrumental reason, highlighting how it is enriched when associated with the binary objective reason and subjective reason as well as aspects of negative dialectics. Secondly, we revisit Quijano's texts immediately preceding his decolonial phase. These texts allow us to see how the critique of instrumental reason is an integral part of and is enlarged by the concept of coloniality. Building on this double movement, we are able to map affinities, differences, and connections between the two critiques and their respective outlining of alternatives to instrumental reason, especially the mediations between, on the one hand, objective reason and non-identical, and, on the other, historical/alternative reason and heterogeneous totality.